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No press or social media content will be created by the Foundation regarding my site visit or residency without my written consent.

Transportation to/from the site occurs at a mutually agreeable time. I will not travel alone.

If these are acceptable, I can meet today at 10 a.m. to sign updated paperwork and discuss logistics. I appreciate the Foundation’s stated commitment that safety review is not creative control. I’m committed to the same: protecting vulnerable people is not optional.

Best,

Aurora Hale

Lila makes a satisfied sound that starts as a hum and ends as a growl. “Number three is going to give legal a rash,” she says approvingly. “Which means it’s doing its job.”

“Number one is going to make him mad.” I smirk, because saying it flat keeps me from dressing the sentence in fear.

“Number one makes me happy,” she says. “Which is what we’re prioritizing right now.” She hip-checks me with the gentleness you use when someone’s bones are bruised but not broken. “Send it.”

I read it twice. I changenon negotiabletonon-negotiablewith the proper hyphen because if you’re going to pick a fightyou might as well do it with correct punctuation. I hover overSend.

If I’m going to be a prisoner, at least I’ll choose the cell.The thought comes uninvited and plants its feet. I don’t love it. I don’t hate it enough to ignore it. Choice is a kind of oxygen. You can breathe on a boat even if someone else built it.

I hit Send before I can start talking myself out of it.

The whoosh is both too loud and not loud enough. I imagine the email falling into someone’s inbox like a coin in a glass: everyone looks; someone pretends not to.

“Good girl,” Lila says in the most patronizing voice on purpose, so I laugh instead of gag. “Now we make a list.”

“Already started,” I say, flipping my notebook to the page I wrote last night when the adrenaline finally learned to walk in a straight line. I show her:Pull Ward clinic grants→vendors→locks. Call Nia. Watch four blocks that smell like cedar.

“You are going to make a very dangerous old woman,” she says, delighted. “Okay. Logistics. Clothes we don’t mind getting searched. A bag with a zipper that sticks a little so men get embarrassed and stop. Snacks because you won’t remember to eat. Pens, because if they hand you a ballpoint that doesn’t work, I’ll stage a coup.”

“You’re not staging a coup,” I say. “You’re staging me.”

“Same thing,” she says. She falters, then says the quiet part carefully. “And the other thing is him.”

I know what she means because not saying his name is how we keep him in a box big enough to hold him. “I’m not letting him in a room with me alone,” I say. “Not without a clock and an exit and your foot in the door.”

“Good." She points at the canvas I stretched last night and tuned into a doorway with a hand-shaped negative space. “Also, if you paint him again, you’re going to have to let me title it. I’m thinking‘Man, Interrupted’.”

“Get out,” I say, grinning despite the ache between my eyes. “Go make your calls. Charm a lawyer. Threaten a senator with your eyebrows. I need twenty minutes to be alone with the part of me that still wants to nap on the floor and wake up in a world without foundations.”

She throws me a salute with two fingers and kiss-smacks the air like a cartoon bandit. “I’ll be back in thirty with food and a cousin who loves clauses. Text if he replies with anything other than ‘yes, ma’am.’ If he replies with ‘ma’am,’ send me his address so I can egg his window.”

The door closes behind her with the soft thud of wood finding home. The studio exhales. I do too, but slower. I pick up my coffee and take a sip that’s gone cold and thin, but it still helps. I set the mug down next to the invitation. The seal stares back at me like an eye. I look away first.

My phone buzzes. Reflex says Jonah. Hope climbs up my throat like a cat with knives. It’s a calendar notification from the gallery: Press follow-up holds. My hope hops down in embarrassment and pretends it was never up there. I text Jonah anyway.

Me:You alive? Lila and I are plotting crimes that require a muralist. Blink twice if you’re fine.

No dots. The message sits like a coin on a table no one’s touching. I pull up his last location in our chat—a pin he dropped three days ago at a diner in Red Hook with a note:“found a pancake that tastes like a cloud.”Useless and exactly like him.

I shower and wash the studio out of my hair, leaving the cedar library in the drain. I put on jeans that look like I paid for them and a black tank under a blazer Lila bullied me into because it fits across my shoulders without making me feel like a fake. I don’t paint my face into a mask. I cover the evidence of last night’s war with a little concealer and leave the rest.